Jeff's Record
Combating Poverty
In North Carolina, over 1.4 million people live in poverty, including one out of every five children. Children of color are much more likely to face this — making up 45% of all children in our state but 65% of North Carolina’s kids in poverty. And there are hundreds of thousands more children living in low-income homes just above the poverty line.
There’s no single policy that can solve this. But we have the tools to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and children across the state. Housing, wages and opportunity, education, health care, and criminal justice all play enormous roles in economic mobility and lifting families and children out of poverty. Policy has to be designed to address the underlying racial inequalities.
Jeff has worked to reduce poverty and help build the middle class through increasing the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, increasing state support for affordable housing, and increasing funding for public schools, universities, and HBCUs. Our state needs criminal justice reforms including expanding expunctions and removing the bans on SNAP benefits for those previously convicted of controlled substance charges.
Expanding early childhood education and funding NC Pre-K and Smart Start to ensure every child has access to a high-quality preschool would also have an enormous impact on reducing poverty. Jeff has made this a top priority and will continue to do so.
Health Care
Everyone deserves high-quality health care. Jeff has fought for years to expand health care access including expanding Medicaid, lowering prescription prices, and strengthening Medicare.
11 rural hospitals have closed since 2005 and we have another 19 hospitals that could be on the brink of insolvency. Premiums continue to rise. We need immediate action to help increase access and reduce the costs of health care. As Attorney General, Jeff would go after any predatory companies that use illegal medical debt practices or health care systems that wrongfully lower their standards of care.
Education
Almost half of our kids can’t read at grade level. North Carolina has fewer teachers now than ten years ago. Our kids and our educators aren’t getting the support they need.
Jeff has fought to get more funding for our schools. He’s a strong advocate for investing in early childhood education, raising teacher pay, and supporting our community colleges, HBCUs, and the rest of the university system.
In the state Senate, he’s sponsored legislation to increase early childhood education funding and eliminate the Pre-K waitlist, restore Master’s pay for teachers, invest in HBCUs, and expand rural broadband for our students and teachers.
Climate Action
As a frequent target of hurricanes with over 320 miles of coastline, North Carolina is on the frontlines of climate change. Tropical cyclones make landfall in North Carolina more than every other state in the country except Florida. But right now, we still consume almost four times more energy than we produce and only about 12% of the electricity generated in the state is from renewable energy.
We have to take advantage of our potential for renewable energies to accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels and create thousands of jobs in the process. Right now, we’re importing natural gas and coal from other states instead of building on the renewable potential we have here at home.
We have the solar infrastructure, the rivers for hydroelectric, the capacity for offshore wind development, as well as untapped potential for wind in the western part of the state – all ready to drastically scale up our renewable energy production.
But we have to act now and make real investments. In the legislature, Jeff has been a consistent advocate for renewable energy and immediate climate action.
Racial Justice
Racial justice is a part of every policy priority. From health care to education to housing to criminal justice – each has to take specific action to address the systemic issues that continue to lead to disparate outcomes for Black communities and other communities of color. Jeff has been and will continue to be a strong advocate who takes an active role in working for racial and social justice.
Jeff marched with Black Lives Matter protesters in Charlotte following the murder of George Floyd. In June 2020, when CMPD teargassed protestors in uptown Charlotte, Senator Jackson began an inquiry into what happened, what went wrong, and what needed to change. He laid out his methodical approach to get the truth, who he was contacting, and what he believed needed to be fixed and addressed.
In the state Senate, Jeff has worked to address underlying disparities through major reforms including expanding Medicaid, increased state support for affordable housing, increasing funding for public schools, universities, and HBCUs, and support for criminal justice reforms including expanding expunctions and removing the bans on SNAP benefits for those previously convicted of controlled substance charges.
Jeff has fought against voter suppression efforts such as gerrymandering and voter restrictions that are designed to reduce Black political power. He has also sponsored legislation to establish the Black Women & Girls Task Force, a group that would study the health and wealth disparities of Black women, review educational disparities and other key factors, legislation to allow municipalities to remove confederate monuments, and the NC Crown Act to prohibit discrimination against people based on hairstyle or hair texture.
Jeff also has a strong record of fighting for full recognition, inclusion, and respect for North Carolina’s Native American and Indigenous communities. In particular, Jeff supported fixing state recognition for the Lumbee Tribe and creating the Lumbee Tribe Trust. That support has continued in Congress – sponsoring legislation for full federal recognition for the Lumbee Tribe.
Women’s Rights
The government should be standing up for its citizens, not playing politics with our health.
Jeff has repeatedly sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as legislation to remove excessive, partisan barriers to safe abortions. One of Jeff’s first experiences at the North Carolina legislature was when several non-partisan bills he had sponsored, which would’ve closed gaps in sex offense statutes, were added to an anti-abortion bill. Jeff stood against those attacks and voted against the bill and his own legislation. Jeff has and will continue to stand up against the politicization of women’s health and abortion access that we’re seeing across the country.
In 2015, Jeff filed the first bill to close the consent loophole in North Carolina. At the time, North Carolina was the only state in the country where the law said a woman could not revoke consent once it was given. Jeff proposed legislation to close the loophole three sessions in a row, but each time the GOP refused to pass it.
Slate:
Finally, after national outrage and a fantastic lobbying effort, particularly by the North Carolina Coalition against Sexual Assault, SB199 was passed and signed into law in 2019, closing the consent loophole for good.
New York Times:
LGBTQ+ Rights
The LGBTQ+ community has been the target of hateful and discriminatory attacks under the Trump administration, from the transgender military ban to the rolling back of non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people looking for help from Health and Welfare programs. We have to enact nondiscrimination protections in law now to protect against any such attacks in the future.
Jeff has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality. He vocally opposed HB2, the discriminatory legislation that drew national attention to North Carolina and cost our state billions of dollars. Jeff filed several bills to fully repeal HB2 and repeatedly pushed the majority party in the General Assembly to repeal the bill.
Gun Safety Reform
We’ve seen unacceptable, unconscionable acts of violence over and over again. And over and over again, our leaders fail to act. Not because of policy ignorance, but because of political fear. If we want to enact change, we have to change our leaders.
There is a voice in the gun debate that says, “You don’t know anything about weapons. You’re just afraid of what you don’t understand. Don’t regulate out of ignorance.” But a lot of folks do understand weapons — like Jeff, who was trained to use several types of weapons through his service in the Army National Guard. There is a growing number of informed and experienced gun users who are joining the gun safety reform push and agree that doing nothing in the face of this violence is unacceptable.
Jeff has proposed legislation to implement universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders and to prohibit the sale of bump stocks and similar devices. He has also proposed legislation to provide funding for public safety improvements and additional support personnel at North Carolina public schools.
Criminal Justice Reform
Our criminal justice system is not upholding its mandate to distribute justice and protect the public fairly and equally. There are deep racial disparities that impact Black and Hispanic communities. We incarcerate people for nonviolent drug offenses while relying on jails to be one of the biggest mental health providers in the country. We need comprehensive criminal justice reform and real investment in re-entry and treatment programs.
In the state Senate, Jeff proposed and supported criminal justice reforms including decreasing unnecessary arrests and engagements with the police, reducing the use of mandatory minimums, and helping the tens of thousands of North Carolinians who lost their driver’s licenses due to an unpaid traffic ticket. He has also supported legislation that would modernize our expungement system, making it easier for people to have their records expunged if they were found not guilty or their charges were dismissed.
And in 2016, Jeff was one of only two NC Senators to vote against a bill that would have made it harder for North Carolinians to access dash camera and body camera footage.
Fixing Our Democracy
Today, our democracy is in peril. From efforts to restrict the freedom to vote to millions of dark money being spent to buy our elections, the special interests and wealthy few have gained outsized influence over Washington’s priorities. It’s past time to put the power back in the hands of the people.
Since the Citizens United ruling, corporations, super PACs, and dark money special interest groups have been able to pump millions of dollars into elections to help elect candidates that will turn around and do their bidding in office. Too many politicians are cutting backroom deals and voting against their constituents’ interests in order to get a campaign check. But Jeff is different. He isn’t taking a dime of corporate PAC money so everyday people know he’s working for them, not the special interests. In office, Jeff has sponsored the DISCLOSE Act which would help end the secret spending by groups trying to buy elections and votes in Congress.
For too long, racial and political gerrymandering has allowed politicians to pick their own voters, and in North Carolina, that means targeting Black voters and minimizing the impact of their voice. The first bill Jeff ever filed was to end gerrymandering by establishing an independent redistricting commission. As a state Senator and Congressman, Jeff has been outspoken about the need to reform our redistricting process so that voters can choose who represents them, not the other way around. He has criticized both parties for their failure to address this moral issue while in power.
Jeff has taken action to hold politicians accountable and increase trust and transparency in government. He repeatedly sponsored bills that would extend the waiting period for former legislators to become lobbyists, to curb the revolving door of corruption in Washington. He also supports banning Members of Congress from trading individual stocks, so those with access to private information aren’t making money off the backs of working people.
Finally, Jeff is working to protect and expand voting rights and election preparedness because it should be easier, not harder, to cast a ballot. In the state legislature, Jeff worked to implement online and automatic voter registration in North Carolina. He has continued those efforts in Congress and fought to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to guarantee voting rights for every American and put an end to voter suppression efforts across the country.